Doomed Planet

Lunacy as the New Orthodoxy

Peter Smith

Frequent contributor

I recall listening to the late Professor Bob Carter a number of years ago saying that he thought the tide was turning. Effectively, that the climate scam was in process of being undone. Far from it in Australia; very far from it in the UK.

One of the things I notice in England, at least among the media and political class, is that all debate about the reality of man-made climate change is kaput. It’s yesterday’s debate. Whereas in Australia believers still think they have a job to do to convince those remaining pesky sceptics, here the job is done.

Sure alarmists like David Attenborough keep on trying to scare people into doing more about it but the “it” itself — upcoming, man-driven, climate catastrophe — is part of the furniture. This is why commentator after commentator is at pains to ensure, when criticising the disruptive activities of the latest eco hysterics, Extinction Rebellion (XR), that the audience knows they are terribly sympathetic to the cause.

XR is a well organised predominantly white middle-class movement; causing havoc in London by blocking roads and bridges. Its repertoire included parking a pink boat in the middle of Oxford Circus. Nick Ferrari of the Sunday Express calls it a “middle-class temper tantrum.” Lots of people are annoyed by its tactics; however, significantly, no one seems to doubt the justice of its cause.

London’s Mayor Sadiq Kahn is sympathetic. For this he came under fire from the police who have to deal with people playing dead on the streets. But Kahn is in crowded company.

Boris Johnson, while lambasting the activities of XR, said this: “They are right to sound the alarm about all manner of man-made pollution, including CO2.” Here is Bryony Gordon in The Daily Telegraph writing about XR: “…if they want more people to be sympathetic to their entirely noble cause…” David Rose, in the Sunday version of the same paper, sensibly buckets Attenborough’s tendentious and fiction-strewn documentary Climate Change: The Facts – featuring sixteen-year-old climate pin-up girl Greta Thunberg. Yet he notes, “Let me be clear: I am not a ‘denier’. Global warming and climate change are real, in large measure caused by humans.”

I saw one of the lady activists and a government minster, Lord Something-or-other, being interviewed on the BBC. His Lordship had obviously not failed to have his oestrogen injection that morning. Here was genuflection personified; a man whose demeanour towards the obdurate activist was positively fawning. He could not possibly have agreed more with her alarm about the peril that we are facing; while abjectly pleading his case that the government was taking action.

Get the picture? Well, the real picture is worse. Critical reasoning faculties have disappeared. Akin to Australia’s position, the UK’s emissions are a tiny fraction of global emissions: about one percent. So, as per Australia, nothing the UK can do will matter.

Apparently we (the world) have only twelve years to take the necessary action. Correction, Attenborough says that we have only ten years or we face “irreversible changes to the natural world and the collapse of societies.” But, unaccountably, he says there’s hope. How so, with China and India spewing out increasing amounts of CO2? Only dolts believe in man-made runaway warming and yet can’t see how utterly hopeless is the situation. We have dolts blocking London streets and others applauding their cause.

Attenborough accompanied by XR protestors need to get themselves on a wind-powered sailboat to China. Once there Attenborough needs to preach climate Armageddon while the protestors create mayhem in the streets of Beijing. It might work? Personally, I would be prepared to make a small donation to help cover the expenses of their trip.

Critical reasoning hasn’t entirely disappeared. There are letter writers to brighten the gloom. Here’s one from Peter Sharp of Essex that I liked:

An Extinction Rebellion protester said on television that she would not have children until climate change is fully dealt with. This is a commitment that all of these activists could usefully embrace, as an alternative to disrupting the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people. Benefits would be gained on a number of levels.

A final reflection on climate madness: I saw a report that cow breeding was being investigated to try to produce cows which belched less methane. Belch, by the way, is what cows do; very little in comparison comes out the other end. So the rude word is thankfully rendered redundant. I have an agricultural scientist friend to thank for this insight into the bodily function of bovines. However that is not to my point.

Trying to breed a stock of low-belching cows to replace the current dyspeptic lot will take forever, I would think. And, if XR and Attenborough et al are right, we simply don’t have the time. Mass worldwide slaughter and veganism is the answer and we better get on with it.

12 comments

IainC –26th April 2019

A few scattered thoughts about this matter.
As Miss Austen may well have said, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of an ideological obsession, must be in want of a crisis to apply it to.”
There is no such thing as a problem to be solved in good time, after marshalling all the relevant facts and preparing the best possible plan for the future. All problems must be converted to crises that need acting upon NOW!!!
It’s a fact that you should never let a good crisis go to waste – there is power and profit aplenty for the ones who grasp the reins early.
If you want to attract large amounts of funding, donations and followers, the crisis must be continuously escalated in severity. No-one cares about a simmering or static crisis.
Once a crisis has generated enough momentum, there are no opposing facts, counterarguments, contraindications or new pieces of evidence that have the slightest effect. The crisis becomes an hermetic bubble, preventing ingress and egress of thought and logic, until, suddenly, it bursts for no apparent reason, although not until the damage has been done.

Guido Negraszus –26th April 2019

Nothing breaks your heart more than when you have to watch conservative (so called) commentators to also surrender to the climate change cult. Paul Murray (Sky News) this week also declared that he believed in man-made climate change and that we need to do something about it. His explanation? He believes the scientists…! God help us!

Alice Thermopolis –26th April 2019

Reading XR’s ‘first open letter’ of 26 October last year, the group claims, inter alia, that because “the government is complicit in ignoring the precautionary principle”, it has not only the right, but “moral duty to bypass the government’s inaction.”

Any group that uses this so-called “principle” – a frequent tactic of CC alarmists – to justify its ideology or preferred course of action should take a cold shower, along with all its supporters, talk-show hosts, etc. In genuine science, there is no such principle.

Yet XR uses it to claim it has a “moral duty to bypass government inaction” and “tell the hard truth to its citizens.Wow. Where have we heard that before? Germany in the 1930s?

Attention-seeking virtue-signalling in the age of social media in action, aka noble-cause corruption.

Governments have only themselves to blame for encouraging their “rapid total decarbonisation of the economy” fantasy and version of heaven on earth, an RE utopia.

Biggles –26th April 2019

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder’s lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately. – Bertrand Russell

padraic –26th April 2019

12 years to go. Wow! I wish they would set up a large clock in Times Square in New York counting down the days to oblivion. That way we can see what fools they are, just like a climate seer here who predicted the dams would never fill again. It might also get them to divert their “activist” enthusiasm into something constructive, like eating meat or producing electricity from nuclear energy. In the good old days if a citizen had a problem with some aspect of society they would write a letter to their MP and it would be dealt with (hopefully) out of fear of losing a potential voter at the next election. My father was an exponent of this form of participatory democracy – he claimed he wrote the letters in “oil of vitriol” and sent them in asbestos envelopes, mainly to the local Council. Who are these activist ratbags who think they can act outside our democratic model? They strike me as spoilt brats who never grew up and think if they whinge loud enough mummy (aka the Government) will relent and give them what they want. The situation is made worse by a juvenile media that gives them oxygen. I used to like watching David Rabbitborough’s shows, thinking he was fairly sensible, but I’ll ignore his shows and focus on feeding the parrots in the backyard.

en passant –27th April 2019

Peter,
Alice asks ‘where have we heard this before …?’
Here is an extract from an article I wrote in 2012 that may answer her question:
“At University in 1973, I was using this knowledge [about climate change] to write an essay as part of an elective. Unfortunately, I found that free thought, independent research of texts not on the curriculum, private science projects and challenging the orthodoxy was not welcomed. To obtain a “C” pass I reluctantly followed the party line. Shamefully, my scepticism was dormant as I had also become persuaded that such knowledgeable people, who spent their lives studying such things and with so many degrees, titles and accolades to their names must know better, otherwise they would have been proven wrong by other equally brilliant minds. Right?
Yes, we were taught that the consensus mandated with absolute certainty that the next Ice Age was due in twenty years and the world was doomed. After all it was a proven fact in tables, graphs, mathematical formulae and new-fangled computer models that the world would be uninhabitable by the Year 2000 (not ‘2012’ as the Mayans calculated in their apocalyptic calendar) as the North Atlantic would be frozen over for 3 – 4 months a year, Britain would resemble northern Russia and the English Channel would be issuing iceberg warnings. With so little time left it was hardly worth going on and finishing my degree, really … Better, just to live a hedonistic life and just party.”
I am still partying while awaiting the inevitable end from – whatever, but most likely old age.

padraic –27th April 2019

En passant – Wouldn’t it be nice if that data and “climactic”conclusion you quoted in the above post was now placed in full page advertisements in the newspapers and on TV, followed by the question – What happened?? Please explain?? plus some media extracts quoting Greenies of that era in support of the frozen apocalypse.

Peter Smith –27th April 2019

Climate change was relegated down the list on this morning’s BBC news show. The new scare, and I am not making this up, is that those seeking Botox injections may be suffering from mental illness, which the aforementioned therapy might worsen. So this obvious idiot posing as an expert suggested that beauty therapists needed to be trained up to spot mental problems and refer their customers to the nearest psychologist or psychiatrist. When this opens the news you just know that the media class in this country have lost the plot. It is no wonder that they buy climate change. After all, it’s even scarier than Botox..

T B LYNCH –27th April 2019

There are several epidemics raging right now. There is AIDS which kills one million each year and is spread by sodomy. There is obesity which is spread by some ill understood mental mechanism. There is global warming which lacks any basis in theory or observation, and also spreads by some crazy brain process.

padraic –27th April 2019

Peter, I wouldn’t worry about the BBC and Botox. Like the ABC TV news tonight (and most nights) the BBC concentrates on giving mainly the views of the feral activist groups or items to embarrass conservative politicians and very little news that appeals to normal people. The Botox thing probably reflects the views of a new activist group of those who are beauty challenged and are envious of their better endowed colleagues, erroneously thinking that it is Botox rather than natural selection that is the cause of the difference.

PT –28th April 2019

Weren’t we told by the UN in 1989 that the earths “life support systems” had hat 10 years without “major changes”? These guys are 20 years too late, and 30 years behind the times in the case of Attenborough!

SB –29th April 2019

We know that lithium batteries are prone to catching fire (read up on the problems Boeing initially had with the 787), not to mention all the reports of electric cars, hover boards, scooters, bikes, phones and laptops catching fire. Here’s a sample of that:https://www.foxnews.com/auto/firefighters-dunk-smoking-150000-electrified-bmw-in-tank-of-liquid-to-extinguish-it
We are bombarded daily with leftists breathlessly talking up battery technology, but what they will never tell you is that fast charging reduces the life of the battery and increases the fire risk. Furthermore, we are not told that the battery degrades from the very first time it is used, meaning that with each recharge it will hold a smaller and smaller amount of charge.
But all is not lost. Here’s a truly remarkable solution for electric cars:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m4OHi7NXuI&feature=youtu.be